...Continued from Part 1
Mark has been working a steady 3 days a week at his regular two schools and was just offered a 3 week PE (phys ed) cover at one of the schools. It will be from the 2nd of Feb to the 2nd of March with the half-term break in between. He's also started an online teaching course for Special Education through U of T so he'll be extra busy this month. Although he's not running with the Goyt Valley running club any longer due to scheduling, he's doing lots of independent runs and prepping for a 10mile race in the Lake District at the end of March.
I (Krystal) am finally recovering after a 3wk cough that lasted into the new year, another sore throat and a tummy bug! As Canadians, we all think we have the best health care in the world, but the NHS in England may (dare I say it) be better. Once I got yet another sore throat, I called the GP's surgery (office) and was told the triage nurse would call me. When I spoke with her she said she wanted to see me that day. The nurse checked me out and she wrote the prescription - wouldn't it be great if nurses in Canada could do this? With my prescription in hand, I went to Boots to collect my meds. They were £7.20. Then I saw a poster and found out ALL prescriptions in England are £7.20! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? Plus kids under 16, pregnant women, job-seekers, those with terminal illness and people over 60 get free meds! Something weird about prescriptions is that if you need repeats, the pharmacy gives you a form that you keep, take back to the Dr. when you need your repeat, you get a new prescription and take that back to the pharmacy - which seems like a real pain. Boots actually offers a service to do this for you with some surgeries.
I'm enjoying the walk into town each day to take Liam to Nursery. I thought walking the hills of New Mills with a pram was going to get me in really great shape before, but going into town twice a day is killer! And I'm trying to gain a bit of weight since I lost a bit too much after Gemma was born (I know, you don't usually hear that) but it's impossible with all the exercise I'm getting. We realized what's missing from my diet - the donut. So we've made a concerted effort to buy Krispy Kremes a dozen at a time from either Tesco (grocery store) or Selfredges (high-end department store) - the Terminal 2 Tim Horton's donuts are just too disappointing to pull out of a Tim Horton's bag and the maple Krispy Kremes are tasty.
We're finding grocery shopping getting easier now that we're more familiar with the different brands and names for products (buns are muffins, English muffins are muffins and muffins are buns, unless they're big muffins, then they're muffins, just for example). But we couldn't figure out why it still took us forever to shop until we realized that it was the store layout - instead of long aisles, the aisles are split in two so we ended up walking the store twice. Now we've figured out how to better work the supermarket, we don't finish with two starving children that need to be fed at the Tesco Cafe:)
We ended January with a great visit from the Rubery lot (Aunty Margaret's family) and a super delicious lunch at The Sycamore Inn. This was a visit that was supposed to happen at Christmas but the road (M6) from Birmingham was in bad shape from the snow.
In February we're looking forward to a visit from Gramma Barb and Grampa Eric!
Photos: Facebook
Thanks for reading - or skimming - this extra long blog.
Cheers,
The Nicholson Family
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